Paper Cutting: "Happy"

Last night I switched gears for a moment and didn't work on my painting. I'm not avoiding it... or course not! How could you even suggest such a thing! Okay, there might be a little of that going on... but at least I'm still working on something!

I decided to do another paper cutting. I've been into paper craft for a while now. Some of the first stuff I did was based on layering different colors of paper on top of each other to create an almost cartoon-like image. The only problem with that was that the more complex the image was, the harder it was to layer all the paper on top of each other. You ended up with a picture that was in this really bazaar relief that didn't make any sense. I switched gears and started focusing more on traditional German papercutting called Scherenschnitte. I don't do it in the traditional way at all, but I like that single colored silhouette look. The German and the Chinese forms of papercutting are done with scissors. Teeny Tiny Scissors.

They look like this ^

I don't like the little scissor approach. I never really understood how you were supposed to make little cuts inside of things without bending the paper all to shit. I guess you use much thinner paper then I do, but I like the images to be able to stand on their own and I'm a bit on the klutzy side so thick paper it is! An X-acto knife seems to do just fine for me.

So, last night I was feeling pretty down in the dumps so I decided to do a card that was the exact opposite of how I felt. Happy! It's part of that whole, "acting as if" concept. I'm miserable, but if I act happy then maybe I'll actually start feeling happy. Oh, if only all things were that easy. I'd just start "acting" like a molecular biologist and suddenly I'd be one! Amazing!

Here we go:

It's not one of the more detailed ones that I've done. The insides of the letters were a pain in the butt because they are only 1/4 of an inch wide. I don't really know what's up with the dogwood's. I drew the letters out first and then just sort of stared at it for 20 minutes. I thought I would do some kind of super complex background that would blend into the interior of the letters so that you had to pick the word out of the image like it was one of those puzzle pictures that you have to cross your eyes and develop a headache before you can see the image... but my eyes were already crossed, and I most certainly already had a headache so simple dogwood flowers and leaves won out in the end.

I used regular card stock that I got on the cheap at Micheal's a few weeks ago. It works pretty well for things like this, cards and items that are designed to be handled, but I didn't like the experience of cutting it at all. I felt like I was going to slice right through my poor self-healing mat. I think for the more complicated projects I'm going to go back to the Mi-Teints. It's more expensive, but the texture and thickness of the paper is a whole lot more suitable for small curves and flourishes.

I have another one that has been sitting in the studio for a while, it might get some attention tonight. It's decidedly nontraditional. Right now it's a fancy handgun and some brass knuckles cut out on dark blue Mi-Teints. I was thinking of filling the background with more pop culture references and having the whole piece be about the combination of traditional, delicate art with the garish violent images of our culture. Really it's just an excuse to use every art students favorite word: Juxtapose.